Organizations Announce Business Journalism Awards

By Vandana Sinha
April 7, 2006 09:32 AM

Awards season is upon us, as journalism organizations announce who wears the crowns of great business coverage.

The Society of American Business Editors and Writers released the results of its Annual Best in Business Awards roundup this week. They chose their contest winners from a group of entries that swelled by almost a third from last year to reach an overwhelming 850 this year - thanks partly to a new category for business column writing.

Not surprisingly, many of those newspapers, small and large, that won section awards also boasted reporters who will take home trophies for their individual stories.

The New York Times, for instance, won in every category, including best business section, breaking business news for stories on Hewlett-Packard's leadership changes, enterprise business news for a story on an online child pornography case, special business project for an investigation into defected medical devices for the heart and business column writing.

Other winners had played host to Reynolds Center at API's own daylong workshops in previous years. The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Kansas City Star, The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, The San Jose Mercury News and The Seattle Times are all among papers that earned Best in Business status for their business sections this year. Certificate winners Cleveland Plain Dealer and The Boston Globe have also held workshops at their quarters.

This is the second round of recognition for The Seattle Times' business desk, which recently scored a National Journalism Award - the William Brewster Styles award and $10,000 - for an investigative look into Wall Street investors urging medical researchers to leak information about new drugs expected to emerge on the market. Reporters Luke Timmerman and David Heath also secured a SABEW special business projects award for the same story.

In addition, past and future speakers at Reynolds Center at API workshops have found their way onto the winner's list at SABEW.

Mark Maremont, special projects editor for The Wall Street Journal, delved into how often CEOs use their corporate jets for golf junkets in "JetGreen: The CEO's Private Golf Shuttle." Maremont, who will speak at the Reynolds Center at API's "Investigative Business Journalism" workshop on April 28 at American University in Washington, D.C., picked up a SABEW award this year for business enterprise reporting for that piece.

His counterpart at The Washington Post, Alec Klein, also won a SABEW award this year for special projects for his series on the routine reprocessing of medical devices originally designed to only work once. Klein, who also participated in a Q&A about this series and wrote his own piece on investigative business reporting for BusinessJournalism.org, will also be speaking at the Center's Investigative workshops in Charlotte, N.C.; Miami; Milwaukee and Oklahoma City in May.

Meanwhile, Chris Roush, an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, director of the Carolina Business News Initiative and a senior Reynolds Center at API presenter, advised one of his students into an award-winning student project on a well-paid nonprofit executive.

Before SABEW, the Investigative Reporters & Editors laid their laurels atop the heads of business reporters and editors from New Jersey to Oregon.

An IRE medal, one of the group's top awards, went to The Record in Bergen, N.J., for its stories on Ford Motor Co.'s habit of dumping toxic waste near low-income communities, causing rashes, asthma and cancer among hundreds of families.

Other IRE honors went to:

•  Nigel Jaquiss of Oregon's Willamette Week, whose investigation "revealed that the Texas Pacific Group tried to use local politicians and others to purchase Portland General Electric only to lay off workers, slash customer service and profit hugely by reselling the stripped-down power company."

•  Craig Cheatham of KMOV-St. Louis, who exposed Doe Run, a billionaire-owned company whose lead smelter in Peru has poisoned a community.

•  David Evans, Michael Smith and Liz Willen of Bloomberg Markets magazine, who examined for-profit firms that used immigrants and low-income residents for clinical trials without educating them fully on their health risks.

The awards announcements may be trickling in, but the season is not likely to end anytime soon. SABEW award-winners will pick up their prizes at its annual convention in Minneapolis later this month, while IRE winners receive theirs at its annual convention in Fort Worth in June.

In addition, business journalists around the country are still waiting with bated breath to hear the results of at least two more major medals: the prestigious Pulitzer Prizes to be announced in a little more than a week, and finalists for the Gerald Loeb Awards for Distinguished Business and Financial Journalism to be announced shortly thereafter.

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